For the most part, my life’s very good. I’m happy, healthy, I love what I do for both the day job and my passion. I always feel as though I’m living my dream, or as close to my dream as I can get at this point. Because if I’m not living my dream, then who will?
I do, however, have a couple of — I don’t know what to call them. Irritants trivializes them. Sticking points, perhaps, in the flow of things, impediments. They’re smaller than problems though that might also be an accurate name for them. They make me sad, melancholy sometimes. There’s little I can do to fix them, and be assured, that I’m doing what I can.
Last night I was thinking about one of them, bitching to myself.
And then the magic happened. I don’t know what else to call it. But this problem inspired me. I fictionalized it, turned it into a conflict in the novel for my main character. Which in turn, made me really, really happy. This problem of mine now significantly informs the next novel, and has made it much more complex and layered.
This isn’t therapy fic – I’m not processing or dealing with this problem in the novel. The main character’s version isn’t the exact same as mine, I’ve skewed it. It’s merely recognizable to me.
All my novels are incredibly autobiographical. I hope that I’ve hidden the events well enough that people don’t put two and two together and get an accurate four. (Yeah, that was the other thing — the one character puts two and two together and he gets a very inaccurate four which is going to be so much fun to exploit now.)
How autobiographical is your work? Do you spend a lot of time filing off the serial numbers so no one else can see it? Or do you think it’s transparent for readers who really know you?
i’m going with -ish. 🙂 example: my last drink bird head story for the vandermeer anthology. i’d just been laid off and was thinking of how a)dependent the department was upon the ‘invisible’ things i did and b)the replacement my micro-manager perfectionist boss had hired to take my place had just quit after *four hours* working a thankless job i’d done for a year and a half and how my micro-manager perfectionist boss was about to learn how important the invisible stuff was. then i started thinking how everyone must feel that way at times and was this a correct perception? was it an incorrect one? does it really matter in the end?
so, i wrote a story about a toy bird who thought it was moving invisible particles on a space ship.
i don’t call that therapy. i call that inspiration. stories have to have an element of the real to them or they just don’t ring true for the reader, you know?
I agree, yours is more inspiration. And I do a lot of that. But this felt closer to therapy. I do agree, though, that stories have to have elements of real, no matter the characters or situation, or readers won’t believe them.
Fiction as method acting and autobiography? Yep, that’s me.
Method acting — yeah. For me that’s why the phrase, “Writing is easy. Just open a vein,” has always been so appropriate. I feel everything my characters do. There are still scenes in these novels that make me cry. And I frequently get up and act out scenes as well. I figured I wasn’t the only one. *G*
Yes and no. I started a novel that was a fictionalized autobiography, and it was terrifying to write. But then, the characters and plot took over and it no longer really had anything to do w/me. Which is actually rather refreshing. But it is also something I haven’t finished, b/c even so, it’s still very hard to write. Best of luck w/yours!
I have a novel that I never finished because it was all about grief, and then my mom died. I’ve never been able to pick that novel back up (there are other reasons as well.) Best of luck with everything you’re doing!